September 12, 2012

Mass democratic movements often do not achieve democracy for all. Even the Indian colonial liberation movement of the 1930s and 1940s, perhaps one among a handful of iconic democratic movements, did not achieve full citizenship for all Indians. Take the cases of the bonded laborers from the scheduled tribes of West Bengal, India, such as the Lodhas, the Mundas, and the Kherias.

July 11, 2012

Everybody is aware of the effects of Trade Area policies
like NAFTA and CAFTA.They promise
lower prices and prosperity, freedom and happiness, but deliver draconian
policies and enforcement mechanisms that hurt workers, the environment, and
democracy.The latest maneuver in this
bait and switch approach to trade, which some know as “NAFTA
on steroids,” is called the TransPacific Free Trade Area proposal, or the
TPFTA.

Rancière, Jacques: Rancière believes democracy is neither a
governmental or societal structure. Rather, it is the underlying principle
which makes both possible. For
Rancière, democracy is the equality
at the heart of inequality. Democracy, equality, is the underlying condition of
politics, and not a goal or structure to be attained.

Brown, Wendy: The worddemocracy means only that “the people” rule themselves,
that the whole rather than a part or an Other is politically sovereign.
However, as Brown points out, this definition does not necessarily entail
“representation, constitutions, deliberation, participation, free markets,
rights, universality or even equality.”

Agamben, Giorgio: Agamben suggests the word democracy has at least
two, distinct meanings that often get mistakenly conflated. First, democracy
refers to the political agreements (such as a constitution, public law, social
norms) through which the people organize and make collective decisions. Agamben
calls this a “political-juridical” rationality—meaning this aspect of democracy
refers to the creation of laws, and the constant revision of law, by the people
of any given collective.

April 26, 2012

After Manuel Zelaya was elected President of Honduras and
took office early in 2006, he began supporting some reformist policies such as
raising the minimum wage, reversing deceptive land ownership practices, and
aligning with the international group of countries known as ALBA. Shortly after pursuing these policies he was
overthrown by the Honduran political class through a 2009 military coup
d’etat. Shortly after the coup, the
European Union, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States opposed
the new leadership, but within months the United States changed its position to
support the military leadership. The United States also supported the elections
in the fall of 2010 to replace the overthrown civilian leadership when other
countries globally refused to recognize the new government. And the U.S. renewed
full military aid by February 2010, even though in the case of other coups
in Nicaragua, Mauritania, and Madagascar the U.S.
terminated aid agreements.

February 7, 2012

Two activist conservative U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations were among the seven NGO offices raided by the Egyptian authorities last December 29. The attempts to bring publicity to the work of these organizations by the Egyptian military rulers escalated January 26 , when Sam LaHood and other employees of the International Republican Institute’s program in Egypt were refused permission, at the airport, to leave the country. As the story continues to unfold, the U.S. embassy has now decided to protect some of the NDI and IRI employees in the large embassy compound in Cairo.

January 23, 2012

Early in 2011 Egyptian democratic activists challenged their government’s status quo, and their hard work paid off when Mubarak fell from power on January 25, 2011. Democracy has not looked so powerful in many decades. After this first anniversary, the question becomes ’what are the conditions of democratic governance at the one-year mark?‘

If we measure democracy in terms of elections, many commentators have noted that the rapid move to elections guaranteed the already well-organized Muslim Brotherhood an advantage at the early, formative stage of the transition to an electoral system. And the election results announced this past Sunday show why. The young activists whose organizing overthrew Mubarak gained only 7 seats in the People’s Assembly, while a new tech mogul billionaire’s party won over 7% and long-established Islamist and liberal parties won the rest of the seats.